The Struggle

She was seventy- five years old,

Her daughter went to bring her to the city from the village

Her husband was a pastor in the village

He died very recently

After his demise and burial

Her daughter decided she would be too lonely in the village and brought her to live with her and her family

Her daughter was a member of their church

She started attending his church too

She arrived in church at least twenty minutes before every service

She was a very pious, godly and heavenly woman

She came to him one Sunday morning

She had a dream

“Her dreams always came to pass” she said

“In his church, six of the waiting mothers would be pregnant

All he needed to do was call them out during the Sunday service and lay hands on them

He took her words with a pinch of salt

When Sunday came, he called them out as instructed

He actually didn’t want to offend her and her daughter

He also didn’t want to be caught in unbelief

What if God really spoke to her?

He laid hands on them and pronounced their season of fruitfulness

He forgot all about it afterwards

Few weeks later

They all got pregnant

From the one who had been called barren for seven years, to the one who had been waiting on the Lord for sixteen years

A strange buzz went around the church

Then she came to him, she had dreamt about something else

Seventeen of the unemployed youths in the church will be employed within a fortnight

She gave him the list of their names

All he had to do was call those people out during church service and declare it as she saw him do in her dream

He did it

Within two weeks, everyone of those he prayed for became employed

Wow!

His regard for her skyrocketed

Who is this grandma? (He fondly called her ‘Grandma”)

How come God sent him such a ministry helper at such a precarious time?

He had been considering giving up the ministry for some time

He had struggled for over nine years to get the ministry moving

He had a very vibrant fellowship when he was a student

He had always wanted to be a pastor

His father was a pastor and so was his grandfather

Ministry runs in their veins

His first taste of ministry on campus was fantastic

He decided that was where his future lay

But outside of campus everything went downhill

He struggled to get members

He started from his sitting room and later moved to a school

He fasted and prayed

He did crusades under the sun and in the rain

He had been told persistence and perseverance were key in ministry

After the first eight years he had twenty-eight members

He would have died of hunger but for the secular job he picked up to augment his income

The very day the ministry clocked eight

He embarked on a forty days and forty nights fast

He had been told that such spiritual exercises transform a church

He wasn’t asking for too much

Just 100 stable members out of which he would be happy to have twenty workers and five other ministers

After the forty days fasting and prayer

She was the only new member they got

She was weird in a certain way

She spoke in strange tongues while praying and was always telling tales of the supernatural

He just chalked her antics down to old age

He had decided to stylishly merge the church with another one down the street and migrate to either the United States or Canada to save face

It might be that he wasn’t meant to be a Pastor!

She was the secret behind the transformation of his ministry

Within a year of her arrival in his church

The population of the church hit 200 stable members

The miracles, signs and wonders were outstanding

Sometimes she would send him a text

“I saw such and such, please do this and that”

Sometimes she would call him out of the blue and tell him certain things

It was like having his own personal oracle beside him

The most amazing aspect of everything was her attitude

She didn’t put up any airs

She didn’t talk too much

She remained humble and always in the background

He didn’t give her any public recognition

When he called for ministers and workers

He expected her to be the first to join the queue

She didn’t!

He asked her after the service

Why are you not joining the workers?

She said she wasn’t told to by the Holy Spirit

He shrugged

He had never heard the Holy Spirit for himself before

There was a time he used to as a new convert

He didn’t know what happened

One day the thing just lifted

Everything he did in ministry, he did by faith!

That night when he got home, he had a dream

He saw the Holy Spirit at the other end of a great river

The Holy Spirit waved at him

He waved back

The Holy Spirit beckoned on him to come over

He put his left leg in the water and shrank back

Out of nowhere he saw other people, young, old, male, female, pregnant, single, married even children

They started walking towards the Holy Spirit

They got to the river and just walked on as if the water was solid ground

They didn’t sink

They just walked on

And there he was, watching them in awe, unable to do what they were doing

When he woke up, he was sweating

He instinctively knew he had lost a great opportunity

“What was the Holy Spirit saying?

Why couldn’t he step into the water?

Every other person he saw did so with confidence

What does this mean?”

Later in the morning, he called her

Her phone rang out

He waited for a while and dialed her number again

The phone rang out

Later in the afternoon, he was told shewas in the hospital

He hurried to the hospital

Immediately she saw him, she said “Why didn’t you step in the water?”

He was shocked!

How did she know?

She: I had been praying for you for several weeks and yesterday I asked the Holy Spirit to please bring you to the river of life. I saw you when you arrived! I waved at you over and over again to come over to my side but you cringed and shrank back as soon as your leg touched the water

Why?

He: It wasn’t you I saw! I saw the Holy Spirit!!

She: How did you know it was the Holy Spirit that you saw?

He: I just knew

She: Why didn’t you step into the river?

He: I don’t know

She: The fearful can never enter the Kingdom of God!

He: I wasn’t afraid

She: Weren’t you?

She got it right!

He was afraid!

It was fear!

He suddenly grew restless

He started pacing the floor back and forth, thinking aloud

He didn’t understand all the Holy Spirit business! It was too strange and abnormal!

He loves the Lord and believes totally in the Bible

He desires to practice what the Bible says but how?

The speaking in tongues business for example was just too damn weird!

Everybody doesn’t have to do it!

He has some of the fruits of the Holy Spirit and he was working everyday towards having those he was deficient in consistently

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)

That should be proof enough that he was full of the Holy Spirit

Wasn’t that enough?

Dreams, visions, miracles, signs and wonders and so on are too easy to fake and clone and used to deceive people

Didn’t Jesus say “By their fruits you shall know them?”

His grandfather was respectable preacher, he was celebrated all over the nation for his stand for truth and righteousness

He had the Holy Spirit but he never spoke in tongues and he didn’t have any supernatural things like that

He was a man of great character

A defender of the faith

A man of God!

His Father was the same!

A man who stood with the civil right activists of the country against the tyranny of oppression and evil!

A social commentator, renowned for his political column in a national newspaper

Jesus was the compass for their truth and reality

He aspired to be like them

He wanted so much to fill their shoes and do them proud

They didn’t believe in miracles

They didn’t do the supernatural

They were celebrated successes

Those were the ones he sought to impress

They kept him from stepping into the river!

She looked at him and smiled

She: You have labored for years on your own strength and ambition, it is time to lean on the everlasting arms of the Holy Spirit. It is His church, let him lead it as he sees fit! You might be a church founder but you didn’t lay any new foundation. Christ is the one foundation of the church for all time!

He is the leader, the instructor and the director

All you need to do is yield

Please, my son, yield and experience the wings of the Holy Spirit. Let Him carry you!

Just then, something absolutely out of this world happened

Her face lit up

It was as if he had suddenly become transparent and she could see right through him

She said “Beautiful, wonderful, welcome”

And with the brightest smile and the most radiant shine on her face, she closed her eyes and breathed her last!

It was the very next thing to ascension!

He stood there transfixed

What had he just witnessed!

The nurses and her daughter met him in that same spot five minutes later

He couldn’t move

He couldn’t talk

His gaze didn’t waver

He was just looking at her radiant face even as she had slept in the Lord

That was her most persuasive argument

That supernaturally glorious moment of rhapsodic radiance that made his body tingle with goose pimples

When he got home that day, he decided he needed to have what she had

She was in his church for all of eighteen months

Her presence turned his bitter story to one of joy

The problem was how would he get it?

He called a friend who also had a church

They met at a conference he attended recently

He told his friend to recommend a born-again brother full of the Holy Spirit to him

His friend sent him a phone number

He called

He chatted with the person on the other end of the line

They agreed to meet at his church

That evening, the brother came wearing Jeans and T-shirt

He was wearing a suit with tie to boot!

He wanted to appear ready for the journey to the river of the Holy Spirit

The brother in Jeans and T-shirt looked at him and embraced him without saying a word

The embrace lasted for about 2 minutes

He couldn’t explain what happened afterwards

It started from his toes

They were tingling

Then his fingers too

He suddenly couldn’t stand straight

Tears ran to his eyes

His insides were on fire

He clenched his teeth

The brother in Jeans and T-shirt looked at him and said: The Holy Spirit will not move your mouth for you, he will not move your vocal cords for you, the only thing you wont do is shape the words as they come out of your mouth!

Speak in tongues now!

It was as if he had been waiting for that instruction all his life

He opened his mouth

Words of power burst forth

Once he started, he couldn’t stop!

He didn’t know when he removed his jacket and tie

He didn’t know for how long he was there

By the time the utterance rested

The young man in Jeans and T-shirt was long gone

That night, as he slept

He saw her, she was standing right next to the Holy spirit

He was no longer on the other side of the river

He was right beside them too

The three of them stepped on the river and walked on and on

Ps: His ministry is still waxing strong today

His church is located somewhere in Lagos

This event happened in 2013

“And ye shall receive Power…